Effective feedback is a crucial for employees in helping them progress, navigate around the workplace and build self-awareness around areas that are their strengths and weaknesses allowing them to hone in on certain skill sets or improve. If done in the right way, leaders can really help to develop employees, keep them motivated and build performance across the organisation. But similarly, if done in the wrong way, feedback can actually have a detrimental impact on an employee's performance and ability to focus, causing employees to become stressed, demotivated in the workplace and at worst cases, wanting to leave.
In this article we are going to address some of the common mistakes leaders make when giving employee's feedback and how we can avoid some of these pitfalls and increase happiness, engagement and effectiveness in the workplace. Let's start by taking a look at three of the most common mistakes managers use when giving employee's feedback.
1. Avoid giving critical corrective feedback too frequently.
As a leader, pressures can sometimes be overwhelming in getting your team to perform. Being able to course correct and times and steer your team back on track through feedback is very important, but if done too frequently it can often have the adverse effects of making an employee feel micromanaged and under appreciated. Sadly this is an easy area where leaders often get it wrong. In hope of correcting behaviours and trying to set the employee up for success, giving corrective feedback too frequently can have the opposite effect and break down trust and can feel overly critical jeopardising the ability for the employee to receive feedback in productive way without the situation resulting in defensiveness where neither party wins.
2. Remember to praise little and often.
Often leaders are highly focused on improvements and getting things done but occasionally forget to stop, pause and reflect on how far their employee has come and praise them in areas where they have excelled. This tends to happen as it's human nature to focus on the negatives and when challenges arise, but it's also crucial for managers to remember, you tend to get the best out of your team and fuel motivation by positive reinforcement and encouragement over time, so taking time out to point out what they have done well and offer praise is an important skill to practice and can go a long way in motivating your struggling team members and giving them positive reinforcement in the area's that their strengths lay in, keeping them motivated and wanting to do more.
3. Take time to understand how best your employee receives feedback. Lastly, everybody gives and receives feedback in different ways and no two employees are ever the same. Some prefer to have sandwiched feedback to lessen the negative blow, some prefer it written down so that they can take their time understanding and reading through it, some prefer it on the spot and in the moment after an important presentation or a meeting call, but every employee is different and they way that they respond to feedback will be different too, but asking employees how best they like to receive feedback at the start will set you leaps forward when it comes to those trickier times around sharing good valuable feedback.
Hopefully by practicing a few of these tips you can help build stronger working relationships with your all of your employees, reinforce positive behaviours and keep your team motivated and engaged in reaching their goals.
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